Tuesday, 14 August 2012

Save The Dandy!

I read this very disspiriting article on the Guardian last night, indicating that The Dandy, Britain's longest-running comic*, may be facing closure. And... that sucks. There are few enough great comics for children to read in this country, and the last thing we need is to lose one of the best. My son's just coming into the right age range for it and he loves it, and it drives me nuts to think that it might not be there any more.

The recently-relaunched version of the Dandy features work by lots of brilliant, talented, hilarious British cartoonists, and feels like a fresh new take on the format that, frankly, deserves more of a chance to grow and develop and evolve. So: I'm going to go out and buy the Dandy. You should do so too. 70-something years of publication**, and it goes down on our watch? Nuts to THAT.

So yeah, I got up this morning and drew Desperate Dan. See above. My version came out looking a bit more like the old-school version than Jamie Smart's current model, but I guess that's just the way I draw. Mr Smart's work on the character - and indeed all his OTHER work on the Dandy - is just utterly brilliant: funny, inventive, anarchic and inspiring, and if you have kids you should absolutely make a point of introducing them to it.